Thursday, July 11, 2013

Since blogger seems to have stepped up its deleting of blogs, I will be moving to a wordpress account. It's the fastest way to get the move accomplished in case something happens here. The blog isn't up yet, but when it is, it will be at jennytrout.wordpress.com. And I'm also going to find a way to integrate it into my existing website.

Just as a warning: due to the way blogger deals with text quotations and the way wordpress deals with text quotations, past recaps of both Buffy and 50 Shades will have formatting issues. In a perfect world, I would be able to go through those posts page by page and fix them. But I simply don't have the time to do that. It would be madness. And I think we can all agree that the last thing I need is something that would drive me even closer to the brink. I mean, I just got Minecraft on my computer last night, so my days are already numbered.

The "official" move won't happen for a few days or so, because I'm swamped with other stuff going on. However, I wanted to keep you updated so that if this blog does suddenly disappear, you know where to find me in the future.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

This morning, my twitter feed was all abuzz with book bloggers who had found their blogs had been taken down either by mistake, because they had been erroneously labeled as spam, or because they may or may not have been in violation of the new TOS that doesn't allow "monetization" of adult content. The problem with the new TOS is that it doesn't make a distinction between what is "adult content" and what isn't. Is a review of a book with "adult content" in it an example of adult content? Is it monetization to include links to where you can purchase erotic romances? Is this issue ever going to be clarified, or do I have to back up my blog every single day and just hope for the best?

I'm concerned about the future of this blog at Blogger. When I changed from the old blog to this one in January, I stuck with Blogger for a few reasons:

I was just changing my name, I wasn't necessarily unhappy with the service.

I had a lot of readers who followed via Google's blog reader program and I didn't want to mess stuff up or make their days more difficult.

I was familiar with Blogger and it seemed easier than learning something new.

Well, now #1 and #2 aren't really an issue. I'm not really thrilled with wondering every day if my blog is still going to be up or not, so I'm less pleased with the service. And Google Reader is dead, so what's the point of clinging to that anchor?

I briefly considered taking my blog to Wix, since that's who I have my website through (before a lot of tech people run in here and tell me how awful and shitty Wix is and I should be doing this or that or the other, please understand that I made the choice that suited my purposes and is the least stressful to me), but there isn't an option to import posts, and the design options are very limited at the moment.

That leaves me with WordPress. But my fear is, if I change my blog location again... will I lose a huge chunk of readership again?

So, I come to you, people who read this blog. Because you read blogs, so you might know how this works better than I do. I mean, I read blogs, but I've never put a lot of thought into how they work or what makes me read them. Is it worth the risk to switch to WordPress? Is it worth the risk to stay with Blogger? Are there ways I can orchestrate this without losing a bunch of readers? And how much fucking work is this going to be?

Saturday, July 6, 2013

Roadhouse is back! And we've got a show for you: dumb stuff from movies and tv shows that we believed as children... and also how I believed that Bob Hoskins was American until about three years ago...

In hindsight, I should have put two and two together and realized that I was going to be birthday party ambushed. My friend Cristin had called me up to see if she and our friends Adele and Jill could come out to my house and visit, and the visit was planned the night before Cristin's birthday on July 6th. In the past, because so many of my friends have July birthdays, I've held a group birthday party, but my health lately has been not so great, so I haven't done that in a few years. I'm off my birthday game considerably. So I didn't even make the connection that this might be a birthday thing, even though my birthday is on July 15th, and Cristin asked me what kind of cake I liked.

Obviously, I should not have been surprised when it turned into a birthday party ambush.

They came bearing a beautiful cake, and gifts.

Adele brought me this t-shirt:

And she got Cristin and I this absolutely gorgeous cake...

Which matched the beautiful flower lei that Cristin brought me. Being a Fannibal, I knew just what to do with it:

Cristin also picked out a few items that really helped jazz up the cake:

See, isn't that much more festive?

Said Cristin of buying me a plastic pineapple and a barrel of dollar store monkeys for my birthday: "Usually, if I bought that for someone, they would just look at it and go, 'that's funny,' but I know Jen is actually going to use the items."

Jill is also giving me a present, a human finger bone she nicked from a biology skeleton. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to own that, by law. But it was from a skeleton, so... you know, it's for science. It'll go well with my collection of non-human bones, and it'll creep the hell out of visitors I show it to.

Then, because we're nerds, we cracked out my copies of Weird Michigan, Weird Pennsylvania, Weird U.S.A., and The Dictionary of Hauntings, sat around the dining room table, and red quietly to ourselves.

Because we're party animals.

But it was a really amazing night. I'd spent the whole day in a really bad Fibromyalgia flare-up (you can probably tell from the picture that I was definitely not feeling my best), but my friends came over and gave me the best birthday I could have hoped for, that was exactly my speed. My friends are awesome.

Friday, July 5, 2013

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone will ignore the "Do Not Consume Raw" warning on the side of the pre-made cookie dough. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.

Giles is totally in love with Buffy.

Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.

Willow's magic is utterly useless (this one won't be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)

Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.

The show isn't as feminist as people claim.

All the monsters look like wieners.

If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.

Angel is a dick.

Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.

Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.

Some of this shit is racist as fuck.

Science and technology are not to be trusted.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they're watching along with me, and that's awesome, but I've seen the entire series already and I'll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So... you know, take that under consideration, if you're a person who can't enjoy something if you know future details about it.

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IMPORTANT!

I love that my readers want to buy my books out of support/curiosity. Any books I have written will be under Jennifer Armintrout/Abigail Barnette/Jenny Trout. I have no other pen names, and books without those names on them were not written by me, even if the spelling is really, really close.

Heads up, Dear Reader

This is the official blog of Jenny Trout, writer, swearer, and all around obscene person. Under the name Jennifer Armintrout, I wrote USA Today Bestselling fantasy/urban fantasy/paranormal romance. Under the pseudonym Abigail Barnette, I write award-winning romance and erotic romance, both historical and contemporary.

What you can expect to find here in 2013:

Chapter-by-chapter recaps of 50 Shades Freed

Updates on my free online erotic romance serial, The Boss

An in-depth re-watch of the entire series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The occasional post about cake

Lots of swearing

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Say whatever you want, but if it's abusive, racist, misogynistic, or generally jerky, be prepared for other commenters to rip you apart. I am fully prepared to watch you guys eat each other. Spam comments will also be eaten, because I fucking love Spam.

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I'm mentally ill!

I suffer from depression, anxiety, OCD, OTD, and self-harm. Do you? Don't be embarrassed about it, okay? It's not your fault.

I find that when I'm down, I can stave off a total crash by listening to music. This is the music that helps me. Maybe it will help you, too. This is my "Get The @#$% Out Of Here, Depression!" playlist on Spotify.